These are the reasons, which have influenced my judgment on this question.  I give them to you, to show you that I am imposed on by a semblance of reason at least; and not with an expectation of their changing your opinion.  You have viewed the subject, I am sure, in all its bearings.  You have weighed both questions, with all their circumstances.  You make the result different from what I do.  The same facts impress us differently.  This is enough to make me suspect an error in my process of reasoning, though I am not able to detect it.  It is of no consequence; as I have nothing to say in the decision, and am ready to proceed heartily on any other plan, which may be adopted, if my agency should be thought useful.  With respect to the dispositions of the States, I am utterly uninformed.  I cannot help thinking, however, that on a view of all the circumstances, they might be united in either of the plans.

Having written this on the receipt of your letter, without knowing of any opportunity of sending it, I know not when it will go:  I add nothing, therefore, on any other subject, but assurances of the sincere esteem and respect, with which I am,

Dear Sir, your friend and servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER XXV.—­TO JOHN JAY, August 11, 1786

TO JOHN JAY.

Paris, August 11, 1786.

Sir,

Since the date of my last, which was of July the 8th, I have been honored with the receipt of yours of June the 16th.  I am to thank you, on the part of the minister of Geneva, for the intelligence it contained on the subject of Gallatin, whose relations will be relieved by the receipt of it.

The enclosed intelligence, relative to the instructions of the court of London to Sir Guy Carleton, came to me through the Count de la Touche and Marquis de la Fayette.  De la Touche is a director under the Marechal de Castries, minister for the marine department, and possibly receives his intelligence from him, and he from their ambassador at London.  Possibly, too, it might be fabricated here.  Yet weighing the characters of the ministry of St. James’s and Versailles, I think the former more capable of giving such instructions, than the latter of fabricating them for the small purposes the fabrication could answer.

The Gazette of France, of July the 28th, announces the arrival of Peyrouse at Brazil, that he was to touch at Otaheite, and proceed to California, and still further northwardly.  This paper, as you well know, gives out such facts as the court are willing the world should be possessed of.  The presumption is, therefore, that they will make an establishment of some sort on the northwest coast of America.